1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to computer software and, more particularly, to stressing and testing an input/output subsystem of a computer system.
2. Description of Related Art
Modern computer systems rely on a large number of input/output (I/O) devices, for exchanging data with human users, for storing data, and for communicating with other computer systems, among other tasks. In many computer systems, I/O is performed through the use of I/O cards that plug into slots connected to a backplane bus, such as a peripheral component interconnect (PCI) bus. These different I/O cards have varying features and capabilities. For this reason, many permutations and combinations of I/O cards may be possible within a single computer system. With the potential use of such a large number of I/O cards, it is a significant challenge to test a computer I/O subsystem. Furthermore, it is not always possible to foresee and predict all of the I/O cards that need to be used on a given bus system. This is especially apparent if the bus associated with the I/O subsystem is an open industry standard bus system like PCI. Thus there is a need to be able to easily test computer I/O subsystem by subjecting such subsystems to a variety of different “irritations” representative of a large number of combinations and permutations of possible I/O devices within the system.